Blue Mountain Lumber Products (BMLP) is the only family-owned, integrated forest products business remaining in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington. Dodge Logging, which owns BMLP, has a small amount of timberland, runs at least two logging sides, and manufactures chips at Boardman Chip Co., and random-length dimension lumber, pellets and pallets at BMLP in Pendleton, Oregon. BMLP relies on Forest Service timber sales for about 80% its log supply. Part of BMLP’s secret to survival is its ability to utilize not only the whole log (i.e. sawlog and processing residuals), but also to adapt to market price changes by putting more emphasis on alternative product lines (e.g. utilizing more non-sawlogs for pellet mill raw material when paper chip prices are low, and vice versa). However, average sawlog size has dropped significantly over the last 5 years because of changes in silvicultural prescriptions, which now emphasize thinning and forest restoration. This means that BMLP, which has both smaller and larger log sawing systems, needs to adapt its large log head-rig and carriage to take both larger and smaller logs to maintain an even flow of material through the mill. The proposed project will replace an obsolete scanning system for the large log head-rig, that can no longer be maintained due to lack of parts, with a newscanning system that will allow it to utilize logs down to a 5” top when larger logs are not available. This will increase overall log consumption by about 15%, l umber production by about 20%, and reduce operator training time. Overall, the improved capabilities of the head rig will allow the mill to utilize an additional 2.2 MMBF log scale, which translates to an additional 400 ac of forest restoration. An estimated 2 new full-time jobs will be created in a rural depressed area.
Goal: Improve BMLP’s larger log side sawing capacity to economically process smaller diameter logs to improve sawmill throughput and lumber production, increase number of acres that can be economically treated using forest restoration silvicultural prescriptions, and create two new sawmill jobs.
Objectives:
•Install and commission a new scanning system on the large log carriage system.
•Increase sawmill log input by up to 15% or about 2.2 MMBF log scale.
•Increase sawmill lumber production by up to 20% or about 4.8 MMBF lumber tally.
•Add 2 new jobs to sawmill and related workforce.
scanner, headrig, head rig, head-rig, sawmill, small diameter utilization, Pendleton, Oregon, OR, blue mountain, dodge logging
US Forest Service Grant
$ 35,825
Cooperative Funding
$ 147,800
Total
$ 183,625
For detailed results of this project, please see the references below.
